Let us assign a flagship to Heroes

Yes 

I would be more than happy to send my heroes out more often rather govern all day if they could be captains of massive carrier gunboats

Or their corevettes could reflect their factions more (I know theyre Academy based, but one could grab some new keys?)

I understand the devs perspective on gameplay though, this idea may be apart of a new game entirely and I would be for it.

I agree with you and would like to add that the ships in question shouldn't be the ships from the race you're playing but the ones from the race that the hero as affinity with.

Hate to be that guy, but I doubt this idea is really still on the table and being worked on if after two major DLC and 6 months of updates it hasn't even been mentioned anywhere. However, I desperatly want this to happen because I'm tired of how downright useless hero ships are in battles, and would love to see my hero commanding some badass flagship, something unique.

Yes. Wonder if this is still something on the table of the developers, but being able to put a hero in a ship design would be awesome.

Just imagine a Hissho warlord commanding his fleet from a Juggernaut...

This is a really cool idea!

I also have to second this idea, and hope significant alterations are made. Someone above made a great comparison. The hero ships look like Star Wars Republic vessels, totally divorced from the visual style of the endless universe. The idea of the hero upgrading to different Hulls as they level, and have each heroes ship more closely resemble the style of the Faction they belong to is what I would prefer, despite knowing the amount of work that would go into that. As long as it was incorporated into a big DLC package so they get compensated for the effort, I don't see it as unreasonable. 

I can't fully appreciate the need for hero ships to look unique and that's for one reason:  There is absolutely no active participation in battles.  You don't need to spot the hero to target it, chase it down, or give your fleet special orders to avoid it; you see an enemy hero, you choose to engage and your fleet does the rest.

It was far more important in Endless Legend, where you actively selected and commanded heroes in turn-based battles and making a wrong move meant losing your hero or even a war.  Visual distinction there was completely critical.  Here, battles are completely passive and you're not likely to find a hero just cruising the starlanes alone--hell, even with a fleet you don't see the wireframe of your hero's ship on the map!  The only time heroes DO absolutely need that visual distinction is when you're moving them between flotillas--ironically, that's where they LEAST stand out, thanks to the fairly monochrome icons in ES2.

Aweome idea but if it were to happen I would love to see ships of different class and not the exact racial counterparts but various models lets get some variety!

I am so happy that this idea is now listed on "nice to have", because the mod I created is an unbalanced, buggy piece of shit and I definitly lack the skill to make it more than that. If we really get an option to put our heroes into something better than currently, my life is complete.

ValhallasAshes wrote:

Oops.  Looks like I misunderstood your concept.  We have approached the dev's about this issue back during early access and they unilaterally shot it down, because they wanted the Hero ships to be unique in appearance compared to faction specific ships.  Plus heros are "technically" members of the Academy and not your faction.  The Academy is technically a faction in its' own right.  So on that basis, you would probably be more influential if you pushed for Academy/Hero ships to become hull upgradable rather than what you're proposing.  Where you could pay to upgrade the hero's ship hull class.  This would also allow the Dev's to keep the unique look/aesthetic of the hero ships that they want, but give us the hero ship scalability that we want.

I also agree on that. Plus the Devs' idea is really nice when you understand it.

In regard of the Heroes' abilities and boosts, a fleet with a Hero would annihilate a fleet without one (if all other stats are equal) in 100% of the battles therefore forcing the players to prioritize getting Guardian Heroes as often as possible rather thany anything else. IMO

Yeah, I've often found myself taking an RP approach when selecting a Hero (sometimes out of boredom, sometimes because of beer, whatever) and while the hero's skillset works the ship is inadequate for the role assigned (too many weapon slots, not enough defense or support items, etc).  The option to select a ship upon hire would be nice, and to upgrade the class would even be better.  

It wouldn't have to be from the listing of that particular species either -a whole subdet of Hero/Academy based ships provided by or stolen from Issyander and his follwers.  Or something like that.  Just a thought.

I would just like to see Hero Ship Upgrades. Mid-size at level 10 and Large-size at level 20.

nSanity wrote:

So the academy faction just keeps fighting one another? Is that not a little weird? If you fight for a certain faction it would be Ok to get a faction flagship, no? One can always put the heroes in a state of the art 'small' ship (like the one they have now) if he goes off on his own for exploration (under diplomatic protection maybe?)

The Academy is nothing more than a mercenary corporation. They will fight themselves if they are paid to do it. Their heroes are just treated as "special" individuals because of their exposure to Dust.

That said, I think this problem was brought up earlier: in the late game, everyone is going to put heroes exclusively on Dreadnaughts and Battleships. It is going to break balance because hero ships don't count towards a fleet's CP limit. What's more dangerous than a fleet full of Obliterators? A fleet full of Obliterators plus One More.

This goes for the AI too. The only logical way to use this is to assign the most powerful ship design to any hero. That's one more Battleship - with all of its armor, upgrades and weapon boosts - to kill per fleet for as many heroes an AI has. Versus one other AI you can maybe manage it if you trump their upgrades, but against an alliance of two or three? You'll start seeing posts on the forum about how the AI always puts heroes on only carriers and nothing else.

Also, it's going to dissuade people from putting heroes into fleets until at least Battleships are unlocked. Why put a hero on a weak ship now and risk them getting injured when you can just idle them on a colony until you rush the Battleship techs? By then they'll have more points invested in colony skills rather than admiral ones (unless you're a real sadist and insist they remain useless until they get a ship much, much, much later into the game), so putting them on a fleet is kind of pointless unless it's to just add one more ship over the CP cap.

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for visual aesthetics. I do agree that hero ships look completely out of place as they are right now, but I can understand why they're stuck in their own tiny ships instead of commanding on a massive carrier. Lorewise, it makes more sense for a fleet commander to be on a nimble ship that can evade enemy fire and boarding parties, rather than a cumbersome capital ship. That way, they can also zip in and out quickly to assess battlespace situations faster, and don't have to rely on standard (slow) communicators.

tl;dr: ValhallasAshes is right. Hull-upgradeable hero ships yes, assigning ships to heroes no.

ValhallasAshes wrote:

Oops.  Looks like I misunderstood your concept.  We have approached the dev's about this issue back during early access and they unilaterally shot it down, because they wanted the Hero ships to be unique in appearance compared to faction specific ships.  Plus heros are "technically" members of the Academy and not your faction.  The Academy is technically a faction in its' own right.  So on that basis, you would probably be more influential if you pushed for Academy/Hero ships to become hull upgradable rather than what you're proposing.  Where you could pay to upgrade the hero's ship hull class.  This would also allow the Dev's to keep the unique look/aesthetic of the hero ships that they want, but give us the hero ship scalability that we want.

So the academy faction just keeps fighting one another? Is that not a little weird? If you fight for a certain faction it would be Ok to get a faction flagship, no? One can always put the heroes in a state of the art 'small' ship (like the one they have now) if he goes off on his own for exploration (under diplomatic protection maybe?)

Personally, I think this is a very good idea, I found myself wanting this as well. Although in addition I think heroes should gain access to unique academy themed ships as the academy levels up. Or maybe you could unlock hero ships through quests, like giving the top player in the academy quest Isyander Shumèd's ship, and each faction could unlock their own hero cruiser through their faction quest.

+1

I neeeeeeed this

No need for big ship for heroes - that'll ruin balance too much.

But "advanced hull" for hero ship would be nice. It needs more defense (innate and/or via modules) - heroes are too squishy late game.

Maybe some weapon modules, but not much, on par with advanced smal hulls for regular ships.

And to make heroes a little less boring - support modules shoud be divided. "Fleet boosts" and interesting utilities like probes, "science for kill" etc need different slot types (as of now former is always better than latter).

I never really remembered to do hero ships, the fleet was always outside borders and unlike ship designs they cant be saved and done later :/
And it dosent really look like they give much either? its not a strong ship and i dont really put them on ships at all :/ usually always have 1 for ship (more from quests).

on that note, and flagships, maybe unique ships sounds nice,

wouldn't it be OP for some cases? i am a tyrannical person but this just feels like tracing a gasoline around galaxy

I have had similar thoughts on this subject since I started playing, and with the addition of the BEB, my concerns over the fragility of hero ships has doubled.

After reading this over and pondering a bit, here is my take:

I think the existing hero ships are great for the early game, they are considerably more powerful than the other hulls available and offer a great tool for dealing with pirates or early warfare with other factions, so I am all for keeping them around. However they drop off in power considerably by mid game as-is and feel more like something to babysit than a valuable addition to a fleets combat potential and with the BEB around they are at risk of getting splattered in the first round of combat every single time.
I think the time has come to find a solution to get them into bigger hulls as the game goes on.

I agree with Aitarus that it would be nice to be able to start unifying the aesthetic of the fleet as time goes on and I think the best option would be to allow them to access the empire hulls as they become available.
It seems like the best implimentation would be to give them access to a special skin for each ship class (a relatively speaking minimal investment of man hours) or like Aitarus said just give them a dust halo effect (even less time intensive) to keep them visually distinct in combat.

 I think it would also make sense to have them attaching to ship designs and having those designs continue to upgrade normally.

However to make these ships a bit more unique I think it would be interesting to give them multiple additional module slots (scaling by ship class) that they are able to modify through the hero Management -> Inspect -> Ship design screen.
What I envision would be dropping the base ship design with all modules from the base design locked in place with however many additional slots open for them to add on to the base design on the hero Ship Design screen.
To make it easier to manage and avoid excessive costs related to switching heros from one ship to another I think the best implimentation would be to give them layouts for each class that is available to them which automatically take effect when they are assigned to the appropriate ship class and only charge them for the modules when they are initially added to the layout the first time or if they modify the layout for that ship class later.
So the first time they are assigned to a Hunter class ship they would choose their extra modules and pay for the, if you then assigned them to a Coordinator you would choose new modules and pay for those, and then when you switch to a Carrier you would pay for your modules one more time, but you could switch back to any hull type you have already used previously with the same modules without paying any more. If you switch modules on around you would pay for those changes when you make them.

This would also allow you to keep each hero role in the fleet unique and actually continue to enhance their role specialization by tweaking what kind of extra module slots each hero type gets for each hull type to keep with the module balance themes of the existing hero ships. So as an example Gaurdians could still be extra offense oriented by getting more extra weapons slots relative to other hero types regardless of ship class, Counselors more defense and support, etc.

Lorco wrote:

maybe you could get better tier of hero ships with the basic techs for ship classes?

this way you could get some bigger ships to lead your fleet as well as some more progression for the heroes.

I have an idea, feel free to criticize or shoot it down, but what if you were to research a ship, and then it unlocks that ship hull for the hero? Like, if you researched a Carrier, you unlocked a Carrier hull for the hero too...? Each Hero could give specific hull boosts, if you REALLY wanted to get into it. It`s interesting, might be iffy though. Just a random thought to write down.

I would love this idea to be implemented somewhat in the game. I agree about heroes ships aesthetic to be a bit disconnected from the rest of the game, it feels a bit "cartoonish" compared to the other ships. Or maybe a solution would be to change the design (in a selection of special heroes available ships) or at least the color.

That's kind of a yeah, duh thing. +1

Also, can't you name stuff? I rename my fleets, my ships, my heroes... :D

This is interesting!   I almost always have a hero in a fleet, the damage buffs and seeker movement bonuses are faaaar too tasty for me to ignore.   While I agree they tend to throw the aesthetic off, I always just assumed their aesthetic and design was 'Isyander Academy' design, as that is where all heroes hail from in the game.

I would, however, be in favor of paying any reasonable sum in-game to upgrade their somewhat tiny ships to something more formiddible.   I'd also like to see the ability to paint them faction colors, same with behemoths.   

Even a partial paint job...I'd like to slather some black and purple all over my juggernaut to make it match the fleet.

I think it would be easier to assign a hero to a ship, rather then a ship to a hero. The hero can be then assigned to any ship in a fleet and brings the hero abilities with it.

A ship with an assigned hero can then use hero modules in the same way as it worked on a hero ship.

Only question would be how to deal with the loadout when removing the hero and assigning him/her to another ship.

Even if the heroes belong to the academy and do not lead your fleet:

Shouldn't your high-paid advisor be on the bridge, next to the fleet admiral?

Being able to put them on a different ship would be great. Being able to upgrade their ship to a larger hull-type would also be great. 

"Something like this" should be done. Nothig should be scapped, but it should be expanded - more options for the players.

A lot of the time in the mid/late game zones, the heroes assigned as admirals end up getting oneshotted by really kitted out Large/Heavy ships, and have pretty miniscule stats comparatively towards the other ships. That being said though, it is nice to have an extra ship on top of the actual capacity to have additional fire power, along with the buffs from the skill tree.

I'm all for a research path to enhance the Hero's ships to add modules or hero specific modules, or perhaps making it a medium-sized hull later down the path, but turning it into another Large/Heavy ship on top of the fleet capacity kind of sounds a little bit over the top/strong.

I'm not sure if this would be the absolute best choice, however I do find the Hero vessels to clash terribly with almost any faction's theme that I play. I'd really appreciate a better aesthetic that would match the vessels of the race that the hero is hired by and this discussion seems to have a lot of good ideas on how to approach this issue. Count my vote in as allowing the ships to be traded for different ones after recruitment, it seems to be the easiest solution requiring the least amount of effort on the devs part?

Thanks for the support, I agree that having them auto-attach to an existing ship would also be cool. I'm just unsure which is most workable to implement.

Awesome idea I second it. Alternatively you could just assign them to an existing ship and it could receive some extra bonuses or a unique upgrade or something. And naming it would be cool.

Good Idea, but I like the idea that the hero ship should be upgradable in size just as much.

Some people seem to think Hero's ships take command space from your fleet: they don't. I don't mind them being in a tiny corvette since they are an extra ship on my fleets that gives huge bonuses to it's defenses and damage output (and a high level hero ship can be quite a force on it's own). Survival wise, never put a hero ship on it's own, always have ships escorting it/drawing fire from it. The only time I lost my Hero ship is when my fleet is seriously outgun, otherwise it's one of the last to go down.

Awesome thinking!

This sounds like a wonderful idea.

I like hero ships in the early game for exploration and such, but I agree that mid-late game heroes should unlock the ability to be assigned to a larger ship, which would also make their "on ship" abilities more relevant.

Lorco wrote:

maybe you could get better tier of hero ships with the basic techs for ship classes?

this way you could get some bigger ships to lead your fleet as well as some more progression for the heroes.

Yeah, that would work.  Just attach them to the already existing faction ship techs.  IE, with this tech you not only get the hunter class hull, you also get medium hulls for heros.  Or have it as a bridged tech between the two hulls.  IE you research both the hunter and command ship hulls and get hero medium class hulls as a bonus.

maybe you could get better tier of hero ships with the basic techs for ship classes?

this way you could get some bigger ships to lead your fleet as well as some more progression for the heroes.

xBenji wrote:

Noob Aitarus. GG can't deal with hero toy ships so bad.

Can we please stop being little children here?